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Skeuomorph |ˈskjuːə(ʊ)mɔːf|noun

an object or feature which imitates the design of a similar artefact in another material.

DERIVATIVES

skeuomorphic |-ˈmɔːfɪk|adjective

ORIGIN late 19th cent.: from Greek skeuos ‘container, implement’ + morphē ‘form’.

Taken from Apple’s Dictionary application (version 2.2)

The title of this post sums things up and you always need a name for something right? Perhaps this is it.

Continue reading »]]> Saturday the 2nd of July was the day that my Daisy Mould arrived. This is made of silicon rubber and is the ‘negative’ shape of what was first made in clay.

The design is split in to 3 parts, the daisy head, stem and then the base. Each can be cast in ice and I can easily place my piezo speakers and mics in side either part. I should think that it’ll be mainly the head piece but who knows. As ever a few more experiments are required to see what offers the best in the terms of soundie things.

Here’s some pictures below which should explain the things in more simple, visual terms.

Continue reading »]]> I’ve had this idea due to my ice experiments, that I can control ‘time stretching’ of audio by controlling the temperature of the water.

This I discovered by melting one piezo after another in the same bowl. Clearly after each cube has melted the average temperature of the water in the bowl will have dropped, assuming that you place the subsequent piezo in the bowl within a decent time scale. This is fascinating to me, using physical properties of nature and physics in a performance setting. Much more ‘rehearsal’ has to take place in order to find the performance but I do believe with what I have thus far that it is well worth pursuing.

Here’s a very simple video showing what influence light has on motion of an organism, much like how temperature can influence my melting / performing sonic ice cubes.

Tomato Seedlings Time Lapse from John Huntington on Vimeo.

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Just watch. This was always on my mind as a means to arrange my score, present the sections and arrange things by the same proportions that govern our bodies. I don’t want to be absolute about scales dimensions and or ratios, but nevertheless having things within things within things has always intrigued me, and brings suggests awareness of nature’s attraction to the fractal and the like. Anyways… great little cartoon that I would think couldn’t be made these days.

Continue reading »]]> Here’s a quick link about George Brecht and ‘Drip Music’. I discovered these ideas and many more interesting things via reading the book ‘Background Noise: Perspectives on Sound Art’ by Brandon LaBelle. Of special interest was  chapter4 ‘Rhythms of Chaos: Happenings, Environments, and Fluxus’. This provides me with a clear link to works in the past and also offers more direction or rather confidence that others have shared similar concepts and approaches. Sometimes it is great to be the new, sometimes it is great to know you’re not alone, you don’t always need to be a Vanguard.

But perhaps the ‘daddy’ of all this is of course Cage…

Continue reading »]]> Further to the daisy pictures post here are a few more that were taken in the Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh. Again I was interested in the interconnected matrices of leaves, branches and roots. The piezo mics that I have been making with replace these networks, and rather than ‘sucking up nutrients and water’ my installation will be ‘sucking up sound’ for the environment in which I place it. Much like plants can’t choose where they have fallen and will grow, my installation will hopefully react to whatever environment I place it in and embody parts of that environment.

Once again here are the pictures.

Continue reading »]]> Whilst on the search for sonic inspiration, I often find that listening to sound or music is strangely counter productive. I discover inspiration in things that are mostly commonly considered not sound related. Such as visual arts, cooking, walking in the woods, reading a book and so on. So with my new handy wee camera I set about taking pictures in search of textures, patterns, structures and rhythms which nature seems to be so good at.

Since the idea behind this current project was trigger by reading, A Numerical Model for Biodiversity (Lovelock 1992) I decided to take the simplest and most direct route and look right at daisies. Furthermore I was sat drinking coffee on my back step and there they were just looking at me. Some times the thing you want is literally right before you and all you have to do is look, and think a little…

Here are the pictures.